We explain what a parent is in biology and what is its importance for genetic inheritance. Also, the legal use of the term.
What is a parent?
In genetics and other branches of the biology, either of the two is called a parent individuals that engender a progeny, that is, to any of the two parents of the same generation of individuals. The term comes from the Latin progignere, "Beget", and alludes to our ancestors in a straight line, that is, to our parents, who begot us.
The progenitors of an individual are those who bring him into the world and with whom he is genetically related, according to the laws of the inheritance.
Both sexual reproduction, the result of the mixture of the gametes of its two parents, as for the asexual reproduction, in which an individual (the parent), once reached a certain stage of maturation, undertakes a process of binary division or spore production, with the end result of obtaining a new genetically identical individual (the progeny).
In many of these cases it is also possible to speak of a progenitor cell, especially in the case of individuals. prokaryotes.
Other uses of the term
In the legal framework of the meaning, it is also used progenitor as a term that refers interchangeably to any of the parents of an individual (or several, if they are siblings).
In some laws the use of dad Y mother, while many others have recently opted to use progenitor as a way to include in the provision of the laws of inheritance and custody to the families made up of homosexual adults or so-called “unconventional families”.